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Talk:BETA/@comment-27194581-20151111143100/@comment-4391208-20151118144915
The coating is as all coatings go. It is a physical ablative material layer applied to armored/hulled portions of a TSF's frame that absorbs the energy of a fully-charged and firing Laser. Exposure for 3 seconds will fully deplete the portion of the layer that is exposed. Any exposure after 3 seconds will instantly vaporize any armor material known to ML humanity. Upon near-depletion, it has to be re-applied. It's not a "barrier" that can be "charged". This does not apply to Heavy Lasers, however. Their lasers are known to instantly destroy TSFs irregardless of coating or not upon direct contact. As for XM3, it depends on what constitutes "cheating". As I did mention before, in a line of thought where avoidance of attacks is not only emphasized upon but integral to continued survival, human-controlled evasion can only get so good for the physical systems before the human element encounters a wall. They can't make humans physically react faster, but they can make the machine do so. Laser-avoidance automatic system routines are already standard on all TSFs; XM3 merely extends that same type of functionality to include combat maneuvers tailored to the pilot. If that is "cheating", so be it; compared to the always-present material advantage of the BETA it is little. Open warfare today is all about outmaneuvering your opponent with as little loss to your own. Meeting on an open field is a romantic endeavor best reserved for medieval fantasies. In contrast there is BattleTech where after centuries of taking shots at each other, they've developed armor to render all but the heaviest armaments effectively null if there's enough armor. Moving around as per normal and absorbing any the shots coming your way doesn't need a lot of brainpower nor faster-than-human reflexes. ---- And while Willyvreb is mostly correct, some things do not add up after having a night to think about them: The resistance of TSFs against Lasers/Heavy Lasers has no relation to the operation of a 'Mech laser. No hard numbers are ever given for any side; for all anyone knows 'Mech lasers and related weaponry have enough power to rival Laser/Heavy Lasers in output, and that they may simply lack the range to preserve usability for prolonged combat, since unlike the Laser-class they're not an entire construct built around a single weapon, and therefore never actually reach "full power" as their systems would allow for. To say that TSFs can withstand 'Mech lasers just because they can withstand BETA lasers is just simple guessing. TE also introduced a new BETA class, and has for all purposes retconned that into the being that shot at the orbital landing units during Operation Ouka. As far as I know, Heavy Lasers are back to their normal operating parameters. I will concede that even a "pocket-sized" Susanoo cannon is hyperbole for a PPC. It should be "a Heavy Laser-class laboriously duct-taped to the side of a 'Mech". BETA are scarcely close to any degree of "armored" beings. While it is correct that 36mm rounds can penetrate through several Tank-class at once (together of which would most easily amass over several dozen tons considering that each one is larger than a battle tank) and in TE Tanks are laid flat by a single round, just because 36mm has a high penetrative power doesn't mean that the round is able to "displace metric tons of flesh". DU rounds are meant to penetrate armor, not push back tons of material. It does its job because it focuses all its kinetic power on a single point, not because it can push down a whole wall of -something-. Of course Tanks are going to be chunked at the limbs by the passage of such high-powered rounds, but is it hardly on the level of being minced by a single round passing through the body center. Nobody tests astronaut suits for combat ballistics resistance and say that it's bad when assault rifle rounds (predictably) rip thought it. The same applies for the BETA, as per alien miners capable of working under cosmic radiation in open vacuum. They're infamous for withstanding the shock of damage done to them, not resisting it. Even the Destroyer-class, the only BETA type with anything that can be actually called "hard armor", is only protected in one direction - something that, I imagine, is hard to fully utilize when the opponent is using heavy burst munition and landing them all over the place. There is no reason to assume that battleship guns are suddenly more destructive, especially when they're just wrecking a crowd of unarmored targets. The same applies for the illusion of the rest of humanity's ballistic weapons "being more powerful" - it's just that the BETA just weren't very durable to begin with. MOABs also generate far larger explosive forces than that. If each hit was equal to an MOAB, there'd have been nothing left of Kyoto to defend after the first city shelling. To say that these are equal to MOABs or tactical nukes is far too much an exaggeration; there's a reason why cluster munitions don't destroy as much of the landscape. Assumption of better (actual) nukes, however, are reasonable, if one considers that the irradiation covering Athabasca might have been intentional in the story and not author over-exaggeration. As of now, though, there has been nothing said of it. Again, the action of 36mm and others on BETA says little about TSF durability in comparison to 'Mechs; no interrelation, even indirectly, was ever given in that listing of either's capabilities. However, I don't object to TSFs being durable; airborne objects traveling at 200+ km/h hitting a wall (or each other) are obviously incomparable to already ground-bound sub-100km/h objects hitting a wall because they operate at different speeds/heights and therefore have different impact values due to the kinetic energy they have. If one brings them up/down to the either side of both sets of operating parameters the level of damage resistance for one group would probably equalize out with the other group's. However, depending on personal interpretations of "damn durable", to say that, eg. the 100-ton Atlas, a well-spread machine amongst the interstellar nations as far as Heavies go, is only as durable as any TSF, is hard to imagine, to say the least. Certainly it is hard to imagine the Destroyer-class massing enough tonnage with that speed to do to the stocky, blocky Atlas what it does to TSFs on a regular basis; both design traits that let it spread impact across its whole body as compared to the well-separated light frame of TSFs. Of course, upping either the BETA type (to Fort, for example) or downsizing the 'Mech (to Mediums/Lights) is an option when considering proportionate damage. This is where I turn around to take the side of TSFs. While most 'Mechs can hit 100km/h (the vast majority of these being Lights, which are a little under a quarter of most 'Mech types), that has little to do with TSFs, which operate on a level best compared to typical movement of giant robots in Japanese media - that of an upsized human rather than an assembly of servos, mechanical limbs, and joints. Again, while no hard numbers are present, visual clues are available. Most 'Mechs, even Lights, have a visible period of increasing acceleration to their jump that quickly peter out after some time (measured in seconds), while TSF boosted jumps lack that very noticeable "spin-up" time. They simply land, jump, and continue on. There is a "freeze" period in typical TSF jumps (one of the many reasons for XM3 development, to force override of basic operating macros depending on pilot) but little issues with the speed in said jump. Unless BattleTech mainly takes place on worlds with over 1G rating at ground level, it's safe to assume that TSF hybrid rocket/jet engines, together with what is likely lowered mass in general, allows them greater acceleration. While the 'Mech may use engines also used by Aerospace Fighters to do those jumps it says little about the acceleration rates of both types, of which, going by the above, the TSF is ahead in. The only disadvantage is that the TSF's fuel-reliant Jump Engines are a total disadvantage in a prolonged fight, while the 'Mech's has no operation limits since it runs off the very atmosphere itself. This is also important to note - just because the BETA can track artillery shells doesn't mean that they should never lose track of TSFs. Across the series the Laser/Heavy Laser-class have repeatedly proven capable of tracking any and all projectiles within their range flawlessly; only TSFs have shown any capability of throwing it off via forced evasion. For all anyone knows the BETA have no issues with acquiring, calculating, and then tracking a predictable trajectory (again, a trait repeatedly demonstrated in all media that they appear in, and also an important aspect of laser evasion in using the heat-up time of a Laser that has acquired a TSF in its sights to escape the firing line), which, again, is what 2nd generation TSF development developed on - evasion of Lasers using a sudden change of positioning, hence the shift away from heavy armor plating. 'Mechs being able to "occasionally" do acrobatics means little (and 'Mechs that can pull these off intentionally are already rare, the vast majority stick to just ground action and boosted jumps) - such acrobatics are a "Tuesday night" for TSFs, especially in TSF-vs-TSF scenarios and especially when heavy-melee-capable TSFs are involved, and 36mm rounds in close-range gunfights which deny pilots even the momentary heat-up window of Laser-class. In summary, simply assuming the effects of one interaction and using it to arbitarily determine results for a third, different perspective is a flawed train of thought. Eg. Just because TSFs can resist BETA lasers has little to do with TSFs resisting BattleTech lasers considering both run off differing power sources, differing focusing methods, and are all around grown/built off entirely different models of operation. I do agree with some of those suggestions (although I'd hardly call the exoskeleton an elemental-like - it's positively primitive by comparison) - however, not the way they're derived, and especially not the same kind of over-exaggeration I misused in my previous comment of "battleship shelling equal to MOABs".